Terry Bradshaw brings comedy show to Victoria

Terry Bradshaw could handle a blitz during his career as a four-time All-Pro and two-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But Mother Nature is another matter.

Bradshaw was stuck at his North Texas ranch for four days because of icy conditions and missed appearing on "Fox NFL Sunday" for the first time in 33 years.

Bradshaw took advantage of the downtime to prepare for the nationwide tour of his stage production "Terry Bradshaw: America's Favorite Dumb Blonde ... A Life in Four Quarters."

During the 90-minute show, Bradshaw tells stories and jokes. He also sings with the accompaniment of his singers, "the I-Qties."

The show debuted at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas in June and will stop at the Victoria Fine Arts Center on March 1 as part of a fundraiser for the Victoria TX Independent Film Festival.

With tickets going on sale Friday, Bradshaw took time out to speak by phone about the show and football.

How did the show come about?

I talked about it with a writer from "The Tonight Show" named John Mack. I'm a storyteller, and the humor in my stories - maybe I needed to punch it up a little bit. He started writing jokes for me. He might write 20 or 30 jokes, and I might use two of them. We started collaborating on writing jokes, and he started to tell me how to write jokes. The only problem was if I had something funny, and I did "The Tonight Show," he would tell Jay Leno, and he would have something funny to say back.

It took a few months to write and another two months to rewrite it. We canceled out of Vegas the first time and rewrote it again. We started rehearsing again. We opened June 28 and 29 at the Mirage. I was petrified, but it was a great experience.

It's a fun show to do. I hope it continues to be fun and stays fun. I'm 65 years old, and I do speeches, too, and I just have to make sure my energy level is good. The show's got a lot of energy. They thought I was funny, and I could sing, and we put this thing together, and it is pretty cool.

How do you have time to prepare for the show while you're doing "Fox NFL Sunday"?

The NFL show - I just need to be in Los Angeles on Sunday at 6 a.m. I need to be in the production meeting. Normally, I'm in L.A. Friday night and all day Saturday. Jimmy Johnson and I watch college football. Now that we've got the show booking, I won't do Saturday night unless it's on the West Coast. After missing the first show in 33 years, I don't ever want to do that again.

During the football season, I only work on Sunday. I study and prep during the week. I've been doing this for so many years, it's an easy preparation. I love football, so I've got to stay up with it.

I would assume a good portion of the audience for the show is football fans?

You don't think they're coming in because they want to hear great singing. 'Oh, man, Terry Bradshaw's in town, and what a great voice; we got to go.' I think this show - if the stadium holds 1,000 and there are 400 people there I would say probably 80 percent of the 400 are people who know me from football and are either fans or curious, and the other 20 percent have nothing better to do.

I guess the show evolves as you go to each venue.

It's fun, and I'm sure I'll change it as we move along. By the time I get down to your neck of the woods in Texas, I'll have probably have added an Eagles song.

One of the good things is my daughter, Rachel, wrote a song called "Things Daddy Won't Say." We sing that together, and it's a beautiful song. The last song, I pull out a stool and sing "Thanks for Being Here." There are a lot of things that are fun and a lot of things that are very personal and self-deprecating.

Do you still enjoy watching pro football?

I enjoy watching Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers. The NFL of today is the old AFL. It's all about passing and scoring points and rules in favor of offense, and it's like, "Wow, how much fun would this have been?" I enjoy the good games, the good teams and the good quarterbacks. If it's bad football, I'm not going to watch it.

You moved to the Dallas area after retiring from football. I understand some Cowboys fans weren't too pleased to have you as a neighbor.

Just brutal. Just brutal. Just brutal. They shot one of my horses; they welded my gates together. After a while, people got comfortable with me. Fans can be a little brutal. It was a good wake-up call moving there. If I could tell you all the times people told me that they hated me - people put so much into a football game.